PennDOT and local municipalities are gearing up for spring and summer roadway maintenance, including pothole repairs.
PennDOT had 25 trucks operating throughout the winter with 51 drivers, all taking care of the state roadways that PennDOT maintains. Crews occupied themselves with other road maintenance work during the relatively mild winter.
“The guys have kept busy. Any time there’s been a break in the weather, they’re out doing other maintenance. Things like patching potholes, cutting vegetation or doing ditching work,” Jim Carroll, a press officer for PennDOT said. “Whatever the weather allows, we take advantage of it.”
The drivers who operate the plow trucks and salt trucks in the winter are shifted to summer road maintenance when the weather turns, such as patching and seal coating.
Right now, pothole maintenance will make use of cold patches, which are a temporary fix until asphalt plants are up and running.
“It’s kind of hard to put the picture together here yet,” Terry Ruditis, the Franklin street department supervisor, said. “We have many streets here that need to be resurfaced. We’re working on several programs.”
Ruditis said his department is waiting on funding to be released from several programs, such as Liquid Fuels taxes and allotments from federal and state governments for equipment and road repair.
“We haven’t finalized a dollar figure yet for all the plans we have for this year,” Ruditis said. He thinks the figures should be released in April.
“We have a crew out right now cold patching and then we are preparing to go out to bid to pave different streets throughout the city,” Howard Faunce, Oil City’s director of public works, said Wednesday. “We’re just starting to finalize our list for that.”
Potholes can be extremely damaging to vehicles and can create dangerous driving conditions. Running over a pothole puts extreme stress on a vehicle’s suspension and can potentially damage components designed to keep the car steady on the road.
Broken shocks, struts, punctured tires and steering system components are all commonly damaged by driving over potholes and can be expensive to fix.
AAA recommends drivers keep a spare tire in their vehicle at all times as well as avoiding puddles on the road that could be hiding deep potholes.
Statistics released by AAA revealed that damage from potholes has cost U.S. drivers $15 billion in vehicle repairs over the last five years, or about $3 billion a year.
